Can the new Congress finally
meet its responsibilities?
By DAN K. THOMASSON
Scripps Howard News Service

February 07, 2007
Wednesday

Congress has no more important function than controlling the
nation's purse strings. That is, of course, when it chooses to
fulfill that duty - which recently has been more than a bit haphazard.

Last year it failed to pass
nine of the 11 annual money measures relying instead on a string
of temporary resolutions to fund the government.

There is only one problem with
this, folks. These measures had become incubators for much of
the corruption that has marred the Washington political scene
the last few years. The resolutions were loaded with so-called
"earmarks" - anonymously sponsored - that have costs
taxpayers billions and billions of dollars for pet projects like
the infamous bridge to nowhere in Ketchikan, Alaska. This distortion
of the budgetary process has reached such embarrassing levels
that the Democrats, who now control Congress, have pledged to
reform it.

How bad is it? During the last
10 years earmarks have increased from 4,126 in 1994 to a spectacular
12,652 last year, setting the stage for any number of abuses
still not uncovered and several that have been. One of these
resulted in the bribery conviction and jailing of one House member,
California Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who
was earmarking funds for defense contractors in return for extensive
favors.

As part of their campaign pledge
to clean up the system, the Democrats have placed a strict moratorium
on earmarks, including banning them from a new resolution to
fund the government until the end of the fiscal year. The howls
of protest can be heard nearly all the way to the White House.

Opponents of an all-encompassing
prohibition contend that many earmarks are legitimate and should
be treated that way. They argue many earmarks do involve essential
spending, including some that have been vetted by the appropriations
committees and even approved by the House. But at least one outside
critic, Citizens Against Government Waste, has identified more
than 9,000 questionable earmarks that cost taxpayers $29 billion
in 2006 alone. Aside from the issue of permitting unidentified
lawmakers to slip these expenditures onto bills and resolutions,
the entire mess is just another example of an institution that
has increasingly failed to do its job.

Nothing Congress does is more
important than approaching the spending process in an orderly
fashion. Yet while the House last year managed to adopt most
of the spending measures, the Senate, with half its members eying
the 2008 presidential election, couldn't be bothered. There were
more momentous problems to be dealt with it seems, including
filibustering judicial appointments, arguing over the war and
any variety of other activities that were far more interesting
than the dull business of carefully appropriating money. There
isn't much political mileage in that, especially when one wants
to convince his fellow Americans that he or she can do better
in the White House than the current occupant. Budgets and deficits
have never been really viable campaign issues.

Besides, nothing sells the
home voters on one's importance to their welfare more than providing
them with a huge hunk of fatty pork. So every desire, no matter
how wasteful, can be satisfied without the need for all the arcane
fiddle-faddle that attends the regular budgetary process. Who
understands it anyway?

One can only hope that the
Democrats can manage to bring some order out of this chaos; that
they can take us back to the days when all the regular appropriations
measures were adopted by both houses and supplemental bills were
necessary only on a short term basis. But given the track record
of both parties, placing much faith in the current rhetoric would
be a mistake. Still, the Democrats' moratorium on earmarks is
encouraging, but only if it signals a return to some congressional
responsibility in setting, approving and appropriating funds
in a regular timely fashion.

In the long forgotten days,
Congress was not a fulltime institution. It would meet, approve
its appropriations bills and a treaty or two, clear presidential
appointments and then adjourn for the year. Granted, the nation's
needs have since grown in complexity to a point they require
constant oversight. But Congress has fallen woefully short of
performing what the framers of the Constitution foresaw as its
basic legislative functions. Sticking its collective nose into
every nook and cranny of American lives at the expense of solid,
orderly procedure wasn't one of those.

Nothing is more indicative
of this than its recent failures to meet its appropriations responsibilities.

Dan K. Thomasson is
former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.
Distributed to subscribers for publication by
Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com